


The Lighting of the Lamps

by pipistrelle



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Bajor, Bajor-Federation Relations, Bajoran Culture, Gen, Genocide, Occupation of Bajor, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:00:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25290538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: Kira Nerys, when liberation comes.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	The Lighting of the Lamps

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally intended to be the prologue of a much larger project, an episode-by-episode re-exploration of DS9. I may go back to that project someday, but in the meantime I wanted to put this up by itself. I think it still stands as a prologue to everything that comes after.

The messages come in the early spring, just before the time that would have been the First Planting. Some are carried by messengers, on foot and on wagons, who travel the roads openly wearing Bajoran insignias and are not stopped or beaten or arrested or shot. Some of the messages come by radio, by trained bird, by satellite signal, without being scrambled or piggybacked on other, innocuous signals. (The messages are encrypted; habits endure.) _Come to B’hala, to the Old City,_ the messages say. _Come. Your planet needs you. Your people need you._

Kira Nerys, twenty-six years old, battle-hardened and half-starved, hears the call on a thirty-year-old radio headset in a cave under the Dakhur hills, and she goes at once. The message asks for her by name. Her resistance cell, what's left of it, gives her their few scraps of hoarded food and sends her out alone, on foot, to trek hundreds of miles south and west to the Old City. 

They printed out a transcription of the radio message, and she clutches it like a talisman as she walks, sleeps with it next to her heart, as dear to her as the knife she always keeps within reach. The message says things that she finds difficult to believe; that there are only a hundred Cardassians left on the planet, and that even those hundred will be gone within three days. That the warships have left orbit, the Cardassian governors have left their equatorial mansions, the overseers have left the mining colonies, the ore processors are silent, the whips are broken. (The message also says that a million Bajorans have died in the last week -- that, at least, she has no trouble believing.)

She sleeps in barns and fields, in the ruins of bombed-out government buildings, in caves -- never for long, and never too deeply. She catches rides occasionally, on carts drawn by half-starved Bajoran plough-beasts or sleek, stolen Cardassian cavalry mounts. Sometimes the carts that pass her are already full of refugees, hollow faces staring down, and she waves them on. She does not see a single live Cardassian. Lining every road, hanging from every tree and roof-edge, she sees lamps and candle-holders, makeshift _duranja_ to honor the dead.

People in the towns she meets share what they have with her; they know by the look of her that she is Resistance, and they know that the Resistance made the Cardassians leave. They don’t believe it yet, but messages have reached them too, by radio and satellite and other, illegal channels; the Cardassians are gone. Bajor is free. No Bajoran really believes it, but they share their bread with Nerys, let her spend the night in whatever structures the Cardassians left standing, and she is grateful.

She arrives in B’hala in the rain. It's the second week of the third month of spring; it'll be nothing but rain on this part of the continent for weeks. The Cardassians paved the roads they needed for their supply movements, but the rest of the roads are rivers of mud, and Kira walks through the ancient gates mud-streaked up to her knees, in the clothes she's been wearing for nearly a week, half-drowned, lightheaded, exultant. She can't breathe in deeply enough, she doesn’t want to do anything but breathe the new, clean air, the air of Bajor untainted by the exhaust of Cardassian ships. She can't open her eyes wide enough to see everything; the low stone walls, crumbling in places; the low houses, shabby now but with new signs out front in Bajoran script, not Cardassian; the new trees; the empty sky. Even the mud feels new, the rain is cleansing. 

There are _duranja_ here, too, their little lights clustered like outlandish grapes outside every doorway, and so thickly around the shrines at streetcorners that the city looks beset by swarms of fireflies. They're in danger of being snuffed out by the rain, but not of being trampled into the mud or used to set fire to the houses of those who lit them. For reasons only the Prophets know, that's what convinces her; she's walked hundreds of miles over the face of Bajor and not seen a single Cardassian, and now, at last, she starts to dare to believe that freedom might really have come.

The Cardassian garrison is still standing, an impressive duranium-and-plasteel edifice outside the city walls. It's sturdy and large enough to host the meeting that she has been called to, but the meeting is not held there. Instead a shopkeeper who recognizes the look of her points her to a temple in the northeast quarter. Like every other building in B’hala it’s small, and dirty, and incredibly ancient. Someone greets her at the door and ushers her inside. Someone else hands her a uniform, hastily-tailored and nearly the same red as her hair. Someone calls her "Major Kira" and she laughs until she nearly falls over. No one asks why she's laughing; they’re all as grimy and hungry as she is, the men and women waiting in this little building, and they understand. Two weeks ago she was a terrorist, hunted, reviled, and today she’s arrived with her commission to be named a Major in the Bajoran Planetary Militia.

There are a few dozen others in the temple, people like her, Resistance fighters, scarred and thin, staring at each other in cynicism and disbelief. There’s a little food; Nerys eats what she is given and doesn't ask for more, then she stretches out on the cold stone floor and sleeps until someone shakes her awake. "Come on, Major," a strange woman says, and Nerys follows her into another room, a long low room with an angular table stretching down the middle and a shrine against the wall at the other end. "In the sight of the Prophets," someone murmurs. They take seats around the table, Nerys and the others, and a short, square-shouldered woman stands at the far end of the table, closest to the shrine, and addresses them all.

"My name is General Essal Ivela," she says. "I have called you here because of the part you played in ridding us of the Occupation. I would thank you for your service, but you didn't do it for my thanks. You did it to free Bajor, and that work isn't over yet."

"Is it true?" demands a sandy-haired man missing one ear. Kira vaguely recognizes him from the bounty hunter's bulletins; he comes from a province far west of Dakhur. "Are they gone?"

"As we speak, every Cardassian has left Bajor," the general says. A sigh runs around the table. "However," she continues, "the Provisional Council of Ministers has decided that, for our own protection, it is necessary to invite the Federation into Bajoran space. The first ships arrive this afternoon."

A rustle and murmur run around the room, not of surprise but of anger. The general inclines her head in acknowledgement. "An armed offworld presence is the last thing any of us want on Bajor now, but the truth is that we need the Federation. We need their ships, and their resources. Until we are strong enough to keep the Cardassians at bay on our own, we will have to make the best of their being here. You have all been appointed Federation liaison officers in various capacities. If you aren't up to the task, tell me now and you'll be reassigned."

She pauses a moment, but no one speaks.

"The Federation says they want to learn about us, to get to know us," she goes on. "You are the ones who will teach them. You will show them our resilience, our strength, and our faith. You will show them that while we are willing to be friends, we will never again be slaves. I know that the Federation presence will not become another occupation, because I know you will not let it." Her eyes sweep the table, seeing agreement, resolve. "Thank you all," she says, more softly. "You have served all of Bajor for your whole lives, and you serve us again today. May your new posts be easier than your last."

The door creaks open, and an orderly in a sand-colored uniform trundles in a battered handcart loaded with a stack of papers and a steaming carafe. "Here are your assignments," the general says, "and raktajino -- it's not much, but it's ours, grown right here outside the city walls. It's all we have to offer you today."

Nerys takes the battered tin cup the orderly hands her and holds it to her chin, breathing in the weak steam. Maybe it's that she hasn't had a proper meal in a long time, maybe it's freedom that's made her so giddy and light-headed, but the first cautious sip is the most wondrous thing she's ever tasted. How long has it been since she's had real raktajino, not replicated swill or stolen Cardassian rations? Years, she's sure. Even stronger than the taste itself is the memory of the last time, the night her eldest brother escaped a Cardassian prison transport and stole a bag from a docked Andorian freighter. They drank it together in one of the Shakaar safehouses before he left the province. It was the last time she saw him.

The memory fills her with something very hard and clear, like pain but not quite. Without thinking about it she stands, still cradling the warm cup in her palms like a newborn chick, and she hears herself saying in a high, carrying voice, "With your permission, General," and then the memory rises up into her chest and her throat and lifts her voice into an old hymn she learned from her grandmother, back in the camp:

_Prophets who guide us, we thank you for the substance of our lives, for the fruits of our faith on which we feast…_

She isn't much of a singer but the others around the table pick up the tune, high and low, rough and sweet. Even the general joins in on the last line.

Nerys sits, almost trembling. "Thank you, Major," the general says, and Nerys feels for the first time that her rank is a reality -- that all of this, the spring, the liberation, is real. The general is looking at her with a burning gaze, and it takes Nerys a long moment to recognize that the emotion on her face is pride.

The meeting breaks up soon after; there’s work to be done. Major Kira goes directly from Bajor’s new military headquarters to the spaceport, walks down a runway lined with lamps commemorating the dead, and boards the shuttle to Terok Nor with the taste of freedom still on her tongue.


End file.
